Cars are part of our transport future - we should plan for this fact

We need to reconfigure how we invest in transport, moving away from expensive and eternally loss-making fixed rail systems towards better residential environments that allow for car ownership

“It’s too easy to drive in this city. We want to reach the riders that left and get to the new ones as well. And part of that has to do with actually making driving harder.”

So proclaimed Phil Washington who was then the CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It isn’t often you hear this out loud but for as long as I can remember transport planners have seen private transport, and specifically the private car, as the biggest transport problem. In university courses, city plans, books and articles we are told of the myriad problems with driving and the private car while, at the same time, being regaled with the joyous wonders of public transport and especially fixed line public transport.

Britain stopped building new motorways, other than minor extensions and junction improvements, once the M6 Toll road was completed twenty years ago, because planners told us about a thing called ‘induced demand’ whereby building roads magically created new traffic out of nowhere. Of course we could equally call this ‘induced’ demand, ‘revealed’ demand since the new road creates tens of thousands of new, purposeful journeys to the benefit of the economy and the betterment of people’s lives. And proponents of transport investment will, of course, also observe that outside London and one or two city initiatives there hasn’t been much new infrastructure built in Britain for decades.

Nick Boyes-Smith from Create Streets has written a good article that explains why we should ignore both the anti-car campaigners and the car lobby. Boyes-Smith does point out brilliantly, however, why you don’t win the ‘better transport’ argument simply by shouting about cars being bad.

“First off: cars are great. They give the population at large immense liberty to move around the country, the countryside and the suburbs with comfort, ease and relative safety. They empower and liberate their users. They can particularly help those with goods to deliver or physical challenges to overcome. Those who foolishly campaign for cycling or for public transport (both causes I support very strongly) by insulting not just cars but their drivers (and I fear many do) should hardly be surprised that both main political parties adopt rhetorical positions on the side of the majority. It’s called democracy.”

This should be where we start rather than with Phil Washington’s argument that city planners should somehow punish drivers so as to shame them into using public transport (that usually goes from one place you don’t want to be to another place you don’t want to be). We need to work out how to have walkable, bikeable cities as well as allowing people to benefit from the freedom, choice and opportunity presented by the private car. I don’t think this is impossible but you need to start with infrastructure not with coercion or enforcement. It is these latter issues that create the anger with ‘15-minute cities’, ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods’, ‘Clean Air Zones’, ‘Ultra-Low Emission Zone’ and miles of camera enforced bike lanes, bus lanes and access restrictions.

If you want residential estates to be less filled with traffic, to have fewer parked cars and to be greener and more pleasant, simply banning cars isn’t where you start. You need to start with the infrastructure and this has to include space for parking. I know land is at a premium but it is not beyond the wit of man to create secure parking and to have streets where kids can play cricket and old ladies can natter on a bench under a tree. But sticking up some signs, adding cameras and a few ugly metal or wood barriers is much simpler than making a substantial investment in the space. A while ago I wrote about greening Bradford and said this about how we might use currently derelict or cleared mill sites:

“Instead of building houses on that Drummond Mills site and the other big clear sites in Manningham, let's cut and cover - putting car parking underneath parks, recreation and open space. And then let's gate off all those narrow terraced streets nearby to provide safe outside space for the families in those homes. Let's set a target of pedestrianising half of our inner city terraced streets - we'll see the great benefit of fewer kids run over and lots fewer young folk with asthma. I know there'll be people - mostly men - who'll moan about not being able to park their car in the living room but the world is changing and Bradford can be ready for a society where car ownership isn't an assumed status and where driverless cars, buses and taxis provide safer transport for all.”

Policy-makers have to recognise that, while public transport seems so convenient to them in their offices in London’s Zone One, the majority of journeys made in Britain are made in a motor car and that for people across most of England, the car is both essential and the second most expensive family purchase. Cars are used to ferry children around, to go shopping, to get to work - for a thousand tasks large and small. Many of these activities can’t be replaced with a bicycle, a bus ride or a train journey. So by limiting car use - as we see with the more egregious 15-minute city ideas - we make people’s lives smaller by constraining leisure choices, restricting where they can get to work and add cost and inconvenience.

If we want to ‘transition’ to a world where there are fewer cars or (perhaps better) where there are more spaces safe for walking and riding, we need to recognise that this requires substantial investment in infrastructure - off-street parking, good quality street furniture, pocket parks and little copses. The approach being promoted at the moment is dominated by the blunt instruments of the Traffic Regulation Order and the Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera. Quite rightly drivers - and most of us are drivers or live with drivers - get angry at these blunt instruments which they see as simply an attack on driving and drivers rather than as bettering the urban environment.

There is also a further factor at play here since technology is now tending to reduce the need to travel by car. This is most notable with retail journeys being replaced with on-line buying and doorstep delivery (and is, our 15 minute city fans should note, one of the reasons for declining high streets) but car use is also affected by working from home. Business use of cars - and rail travel -  is also declining as technology reduces the need to visit clients at their locations. The effect of these changes as well as the impact of demographics (especially a larger retired cohort) is significant:

“The number of miles driven per vehicle, and per person of driving age, both peaked in 2004 and have since fallen to levels last seen in the 1990s. The average distance driven per person per year peaked in the 2000s or earlier in many Western cities including London, Stockholm, Vienna, Houston, and Atlanta. In Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and Spain, distance travelled per person has been flat or falling since the early 2000s (in Britain, the average motorist drove seventy-six hundred miles in 2018, down from ninety-two hundred in 2002). Miles travelled by car per annum per capita in Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden peaked in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2005 respectively.”

We need to step away from the Phil Washington position on cars and look instead at how we can use technology and infrastructure investment to accelerate the reduction in car journeys and overall miles travelled. None of this requires extensive systems of fines and permits, it is possible to move towards a genuine 15-minute city where most choices are accessible by foot or bike (or mobility scooter and golf buggy) through a programme of investment that recognises the need for cars and builds in provision while freeing up urban space for families. To do this we should not start with the idea that you get change by making driving harder, less pleasant or more expensive.

The ‘war on cars’ rhetoric was an inevitable reaction to a perceived - and sometimes genuine - attack on drivers and driving by groups campaigning for cyclists, buses or trains. The crass ‘car brain’ argument seen from some advocates is the worst example of this specious rhetoric but our transport planning departments are filled with people who see it as their job to make driving harder, less pleasant and more expensive. We need to change this, not by filling those departments with petrolheads, but by beginning to plan with the direction of technology - driverless cars, EVs, work-from-home, doorstep delivery - rather than by imposing outdated solutions - trams and urban transit - onto drivers, solutions they resent because they make people’s lives less free, less convenient and more costly.